Even if Chris is homeless I can‘t imagine it’d be long till he bums free Wi-Fi from the nearest McDonald’s since he loves attention too much to stay incognito.
A news article I read said in Virginia he could receive a sentence of up to 10 years for incest but I agree, with his autism he’d probably have gotten the minimum sentence.
Yes, he can get up to 10 years if he's indicted and convicted on a felony incest charge. It's been 7 months and there is no indictment. Normally an indictment would have happened by now, but it's possible they're holding back on it. Basically one of three things is going to happen at his next hearing. He goes back to the mental hospital, he gets a plea deal, or they indict him. They could also let him go and indict him later but that is extremely unlikely and I can't see why they'd do that.
If they try to hold him longer without indictment, and without him being in a mental hospital, he could voluntarily stay in jail longer without an indictment, but the one year mark is where his attorney can basically tell the prosecutor to take the plea deal now and shit or get off the pot. Spending more than a year in jail without indictment wouldn't have much benefit for Chris.
The only reason I could think of holding it off longer would be to earn tugboat time.
There are some states where time in a mental hospital doesn't count as time served, but Virginia is not one of them. At the next hearing Chris will have built up a year of time served.
Pretty sure that's for felony incest, and incest in Virginia can be considered a felony or not on a case by case basis.
Currently Chris has still not been charged with a felony, his current charge has a maximum penalty of a year I think.
It's a little more nuanced with that. He's charged with something that *can* be a felony, but he's not indicted on it. It's sort of in a quasi-felony state. This means that he can be immediately convicted on a misdemeanor, but can't be convicted on a felony until he's indicted. Whether or not it's a felony is up to the prosecutor, and at the one year mark they basically have to decide if it's a misdemeanor or not, if Chris' attorney demands that they make up their mind.
If it's a misdemeanor, they have to let him go. If it's a felony they have to indict him. Unless Chris' attorney decides that Chris should willingly stay incarcerated in the hopes that they change their mind and make it a misdemeanor, but that's sort of admitting weakness to the prosecutor and then the prosecutor has every incentive to just let Chris stay in jail as long as he's willing to, until they reach 10 years (at which point they have to let him go no matter what unless they decide to charge him with rape).
In normal circumstances, felony charges would be a much bigger burden on the prosecutor's office, so the incentive is for the defense to say "Hey, take the easy misdemeanor conviction, my client has already spent the full sentence in jail. If you don't, I'll make you go through the trouble to do the felony paperwork, and then I'll fight you every step of the way, except it will be a bigger pain in the ass for you than it is now."
In Virginia, legally, the difference between a felony and misdemeanor is whether you can be sent to prison or not. You can't be sent to prison for a sentence of under a year.
The indictment doesn't have to actually happen on the one year anniversary. If the prosecution just *asks* for the probable cause hearing (thus declaring that they're seeking felony charges), then Chris can be forced to stay in jail without bail. For all we know the next hearing could be a probable cause hearing, though it probably isn't and is more likely just a competency review.
If they really wanted to indict Chris no matter what, they could drop the case in J&DR and go for a direct indictment. The standards for that are stricter, but really, grand juries will still mostly rubber stamp it as long as everything checks out. The prosecution would only go to that effort if they were dead set on nailing Chris on a felony.
Of course Chris can just keep going back to the state hospital every 6 months forever until he's deemed competent or unrestorable, and the probable cause hearing never happens.
